Humanitarian Visas Key to
Improving Europe’s Migration Crisis
RAOUL WALLENBERG’S HUMANITARIAN VISAS
The best known Humanitarian Visa is the so called Schutz Pass issued by
Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg. He served at the Budapest legation in the
critical end phase of the Nazi reign in Hungary. In collaboration with staff at the
embassy and the Swedish foreign ministry, and with the support of the Swedish
government, he saved thousands of Hungarian Jews. If not protected they would
fallen victim to persecution by German occupants and members of the Hungarian Arrow Cross Movement.
Introduction
Humanitarian visas can be highly effective and useful tools to ensure access to asylum for
select groups of asylum-seekers with a need for international protection. In the context of
the current refugee protection crisis, humanitarian visas could complement and alleviate
the pressure on ordinary asylum procedures on the territory of Member States in the EU.
A system of humanitarian visas may be implemented on the basis of existing EU law and
could be managed without the establishment of any new institutions. The assessment of
such visas may further be directly integrated into the existing domestic asylum systems. As
such, it would be possible for a smaller group of Member States to proceed through enhanced cooperation in order to test the benefits from such collaboration in a smaller group.
Developing and implementing a system of humanitarian visas promises several key benefits:
-It provides for a more managed and orderly mode of arrival for refugees.
-It reduces costs relating to returning migrants whose claims have been rejected.
-It undercuts the current illegal networks of human smugglers by allowing refugees to lawfully travel to their destination countries.
-It establishes an alternative to the perilous routes that migrants and refugees currently employ, reducing the growing death toll at Europe’s borders.
-It may serve as a step towards a more equitable distribution of asylum-seekers amongst the Member States.
The Scene
The numbers speak for themselves. During 2015, more than 3,700 migrants and refugees
died trying to cross the Mediterranean in order to get to Europe. That makes the Mediterranean the deadliest waters in the world, accounting for nearly two-thirds of all recorded
migrant fatalities worldwide in 2015.
There were 1,321,560 asylum claims during the year, according to the International Organization for Migration. Frontex says at least 800,000 of these claims consisted of irregular entries.
Europol estimates that 30,000 people smugglers are involved in Europe, and that people
smuggling is a growing and lucrative criminal enterprise. Some estimates put the figure of
global profits from smuggling to be around €22 billion a year.
Refugees and migrants spend over a billion euro per year to reach Europe, and the cost
of deportations in Europe is close to a billion euro per year, according to the Migrants’ File,
a data journalism organization that has analyzed thousands of payments to smugglers to
estimate the size of the market.
Migration flows are skewed, with a heavy burden on the southern most countries to handle
reception, while countries like Germany and Sweden take the lion’s share of refugees.
The Idea
One effective measure to get a handle on the refugee crisis is to develop a system where
EU Delegations and Member States’ embassies issue humanitarian visas to persons who
are considering leaving their area of origin to seek asylum in the EU. This system would bind
together states’ embassies with their domestic asylum systems.
Creating a system of humanitarian visas would enhance states’ ability to manage the arrival
of refugees, ensure a safe alternative to the current mode of arrival, drain parts of the market
for human smuggling, and ensure that a higher percentage of arriving refugees are indeed
in need of international protection, thereby reducing the costs and administrative problems
relating to returning those rejected.
A system of humanitarian visas would create the necessary legal avenues for migrants and
refugees, which should lower the numbers of people making the dangerous trip over the
Mediterranean, and thus save many lives.
Improved Manageability
Implementing a system of humanitarian visas in the EU would allow Member States a much
more orderly and manageable process in regard to asylum claims and arrivals, starting well
before the journey has begun.
This enhanced control allows states:
• to screen applicants before territorial contact is made, allowing the asylum state
to reject unwarranted claims before the person has entered the territory.
• to gather more up-to-date knowledge on persecutory threats directly in the region, which is helpful in both single cases but also in similar cases.
Stemming Human Smuggling
Studies indicate that human smuggling is extremely profitable and appears to be the fastest
growing form of transnational crime.
The billions of euro currently spent on border control is only driving up prices and creating
a game of cat and mouse between border authorities and human smugglers. In contrast,
a system of humanitarian visas promises to provide a more effective tool in combating this
form of transnational crime. It strikes at the heart of their business case by providing a much
cheaper and safer alternative.
A future system must provide an incentive for asylum-seekers to reach out to the authorities
as early as possible. Then authoritative information about the prosperity of an asylum application can be given, and the human smugglers’ information monopoly would be broken.
Savings for EU Member States
It can be reasonably assumed that a straight comparison of the cost per case between
the status quo system and the humanitarian visas system would indicate that humanitarian
visas are the cheaper choice.
Compared to the traditional asylum system, humanitarian visas promise several advantages
from a cost-saving perspective.
Assuming that recipients of such visas will all, or nearly all, subsequently qualify for international protection, costs are further likely to be reduced in regard to detention, return assistance, and forced removal, as well as long-term costs in relation to rejected asylum-seekers
who, for one reason or another, cannot be returned to their country of origin.
In comparison, the operation of humanitarian visas does not involve significant additional
costs. While the substantive examination of applications would likely remain with the ordinary asylum authorities, some additional costs are likely to be incurred to ensure adequate
staffing at embassies and representations.
The list of savings could be extended further, however the major savings and humanitarian
gains are that the psycho-social damage that is a well-known effect of long asylum procedures will be minimal.
More Equal Distribution of Refugees
Why would such a system of humanitarian visas constitute an additional step towards an
equal distribution of asylum seekers? The first reason is that a fairly big number of contact
points with the asylum process would be made available all over the world. Today the
smugglers’ routes and skills decide what Member States the asylum seeker will come
in contact with. Well-resourced Member States usually have more embassies than less
resourced states. This in turn creates a proportional distribution.
Persons who are considering leaving their area of origin would be able to seek asylum at
EU Delegations and EU Member States’ embassies so they can start the asylum procedure
there. This would help EU states reach potential asylum seekers in the beginning of the
migration procedure.
Today the diaspora, human smugglers and rumours influence the individual’s choice of
means and goal. The contact with the authorities is not initialized until late in the process
– generally not until the asylum seeker has reached the country where she wishes to seek
asylum. This is too late to be able to correct an erroneous view that affects the choice of
country of destination.
Improved Integration in the EU
Humanitarian visas allow for the start of integration measures immediately upon or shortly
after arrival on state territory. This helps protection seekers enter the employment market
earlier. And money otherwise spent on smuggling can now be used to facilitate establishment in the new context.
In the long term, public perception of protection seekers, and even immigrants at large,
could be improved because beneficiaries of humanitarian visas would have less of a rocky
social and material status.
Not a New Idea
The idea to reach out beyond state borders to offer protection to individuals is not new.
States have practiced it regularly with regard to their nationals abroad, and developed an
important normative body of international law dealing with that subject.
In a number of cases, the extermination of the European Jewry during the Second World
War, as well as Nazi persecution of political opponents, brought about significant counter
strategies by foreign diplomats and embassy staff.
In the years since, there are many other examples of European countries working with
humanitarian visas, including Austria, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Denmark, the UK,
and Switzerland.
The Swiss system of designed and operating humanitarian visas which ended in the 2000s
offered a number of features and safeguards worthy of emulating in a wider European
context.
The Swiss example proves that humanitarian visas can be managed both qualitatively
and quantitatively, and that fears of massively boosted caseloads are unfounded. Without
pretensions of perfection, its system offers a number of features and safeguards worthy of
emulating in a wider European context.
How it Would Work
Today there is a greatly developed network among embassies. Persons who are considering leaving their area of origin to seek asylum in Europe should be given reason to visit one
of these and start the asylum procedure there.
If the visa is granted by the embassy, the seeker can fulfil the asylum application in the
Member State. Thus, the seeker could travel legally to the EU and avoid the Mediterranean
and other smuggling routes. The thousands of euros each migrant pays to a smuggler
could thus be used in a better way.
If rejected at an embassy, the seeker would realize that it is not worth it to invest a fortune
and risk their health to travel irregularly to a country who has already denied their entry.
Humanitarian visas must be conceived as a complement to ordinary asylum procedures on
the territory of Member States, and be well integrated with them.
This system could first be set up amongst an avant-garde group of EU member states so
as to test the benefits coming from multilateral collaboration in a smaller group. This could
make agreement amongst the whole of the EU easier in a second step.
Authors:
Gregor Noll, Professor of International Law at the Faculty of Law, Lund University. Board
Member of the Board of Trustees of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute.
Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen, Research Director, Raoul Wallenberg Institute